Hacked: Hacking Finance

ICO Analysis: AntiHACK

ICO Analysis: AntiHACK

As more and more businesses increase their online presence, their exposure to online security threats increases as well. The security of their online presence has to be protected and thus cybersecurity becomes mandatory for them. For instance, a small souvenir shop might do well with some security gaps, but it hardly is the same with big corporations. To enhance security, they usually appeal to top cyber security firms, yet in some cases, they ask for help from external sources. For example, bug bounty campaigns can be created and tech-savvy people that find any security vulnerabilities are rewarded in return for their efforts.

In popular culture, hackers are people who abuse a computer’s security flaws for their own benefit. Yet this is not an accurate image as there are people called white hat hackers who specialize in penetration tests and other methods and test a computer system’s security. To find these security holes, white hat hackers work solo or in groups and employing them is proven to be a cost-effective method for such tasks.

Still, it is not easy to connect with a white hat hacker as many choose to stay anonymous. Also, in bug bounty programs with smaller scales, the organization running the campaign might not be willing to pay the reward at the very end. In order to solve these problems, a group of white hat hackers has created a democratic and decentralized project called AntiHACK.

In the spirit of anonymity, AntiHACK provides private transactions. A hall of fame feature is also used as a reputation system in the platform, so that white hat hackers who complete bug bounty campaigns in the platform get more recognition. One final thing to note is that the project has a long roadmap as the main-net is planned to be launched in the last quarter of 2019.

Token

The ATH token is used for transactions within the platform and every service and bug bounty programs are paid for in ATHs. Although ATH will start as an ERC-20 token, the team is planning to move to a side-chain later. Doing so will allow the team to enhance security to protect white hat hackers’ personal information.

The initial total supply of ATH is 2,000,000,000 tokens with the following token distribution:

50% ICO

25% reserves

15% community

5% advisors and partners

5% hacker challenge

The team is planning to use the token sale proceeds as follows.

5% legal and finance

5% admin

5% security

5% PR and comms

5% research

10% marketing

20% business development

45% product development

Team

COO Andy Prakash: Prakash has worked at Certis Group.

Jan Leow: Leow was a senior business development executive at Voyager Innovations.

Advisors

Michael Ang: Ang has worked as a regional director at Xirrus and as the vice president of enterprise networking at Alcatel Asia Pacific.

Shane Chiang: Chiang is the head of marketing of HMD Global’s APAC division. He previously has worked at honestbee and HTC.

Ong Jun Hao: Hao is a consultant at ConsenSys and advisor at Kinguin.

Benjamin Mah: Mah is the director of digital transformation at Oracle. Previously he has worked at IBM and CA Technologies.

Nizam Ismail: Ismail is the head of compliance at Morgan Stanley Southeast Asia. Previously he has worked at Lehman Brothers, Citi and Monetary Authority of Singapore.

Verdict

Below is a breakdown of the risks and growth potential of AntiHACK.

Risks

Very niche project, implying that there will likely be a very small audience to use the platform and low demand for ATH tokens. (-1)

A hard cap of $60,000,000 for such a project seems way too high. (-2)

Growth Potential

Multi-signature wallets are used as an escrow service. Prior to starting a bug bounty campaign, the organization sends ATH tokens to a multi-sig wallet which the AntiHACK team and the organization the have private keys of. Both keys are required to have access to stored funds, so it is not possible for the organization to refuse to pay the promised bounty after the campaign starts. This is actually a quite smart use of multi-sig wallets. (+3)

The team consists of many white hat hackers. (+2)

Disposition

As more and more businesses move online, cybersecurity becomes a more important issue. Small businesses such as souvenir shops might not suffer that much due to cybersecurity vulnerabilities, but this hardly is the same with big corporations as even a very small and hard to detect vulnerability can be very costly. To test their systems, these organizations usually run bug bounty campaigns to get the help of white hat hackers. Still, it is hard for these organizations to connect with white hat hackers, which AntiHACK aims to address. However, the project will likely appeal to a niche audience, implying a low demand for ATH tokens. Also, the hard cap of $60 million is very high. Multi-sig wallets are used for escrow services in a quite smart and impressive way, solving an important problem of the current bug bounty market. The ICO investor should also note that the team consists of many white hat hackers. AntiHACK receives a 2/10.

Important: Never invest (trade with) money you can't afford to comfortably lose. Always do your own research and due diligence before placing a trade. Read our Terms & Conditions here. Trade recommendations and analysis are written by our analysts which might have different opinions. Read my 6 Golden Steps to Financial Freedom here. Best regards, Jonas Borchgrevink.

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ICO Analysis: BitTorrent Token

Blockchain company TRON made waves back in June 2018, when it was announced that TRON was acquiring BitTorrent, the company responsible for the development of the immensely popular file-sharing protocol BitTorrent, for $140m.

The BitTorrent protocol is a pioneer in the decentralized networks space and allows for the downloading and uploading of files from/to various hosts rather than a single server.

Perhaps the most popular or well-known use of the protocol is torrenting, which is often used to share copyrighted content like movies and music illegally.

Regardless of how the protocol is used, one can’t deny the popularity of the protocol.

According to BitTorrent (the company), the protocol is used by more than 170 million people every month and is responsible for as much as 40% of the world’s daily Internet traffic.

However, while BitTorrent is immensely popular, the company behind the protocol has struggled to generate revenue.

Thus, the acquisition comes as a break for the struggling company and might prove to be very strategic for TRON, as they gain access to a very large user base and more importantly (in the author’s view), a team of developers that is top of its class when it comes to developing decentralized networks.

Under the new leadership, BitTorrent is launching a token (BTT) to tokenize what is perhaps the world’s biggest, decentralized file sharing protocol.

Token

According to the BTT whitepaper, BTT will incentivize users to offer infrastructure services, such as seeding or hosting files, in return for BTT.

To validate this concept, BitTorrent is launching something called BitTorrent Speed (release date set for Q2 2019), which will enable faster downloads for users who choose to pay file seeders in BTT.

Thus, downloaders (“leechers”) will benefit from faster downloads via prioritized resource allocation, while seeders or hosters will benefit from payment in exchange for providing bandwidth services to the network.

It’s hoped that this will incentivize downloaders (who become seeders when they start to download a file) to keep seeding, even after their download is finished, a problem that has been present since the inception of the BitTorrent protocol.

While BitTorrent Speed is the first initial experiment when it comes to tokenizing the BitTorrent protocol, the team behind BTT envisions more generalized applications of this tokenization model (with potentially more to come):

General decentralized mass distribution of content that might be subject to attack like censorships. With the decentralized and large network effects of the BitTorrent Protocol, not only do content creators not have to worry about hosting their content on one provider, but performance issues will also be of less worry, as the BitTorrent protocol has been proven to be able to handle large amounts of download requests, with organizations like Facebook and Twitter even using the technology to distribute updates to their servers.

Decentralized storage services, where users pay for storage over time

Decentralized proxying services, where users pay to retrieve content by URL (use cases may include content that might be subject to IP-based controls, highly mobile applications, and users with intermittent Internet connectivity, such as mobile users on WiFi, requesting content in chunks vs. in a complete form)

Team

The team behind BTT is the team behind BitTorrent, which as explained, is a massively popular decentralized file sharing protocol, and the team behind Tron, a highly popular blockchain-based project, whose cryptocurrency TRX, is ranked #9 by market capitalization as of writing (Coinmarketcap).

Verdict

Below is a breakdown of the risks and growth potential of BitTorrent Token (BTT).

Risks

Would people actually pay for faster torrent downloads (initial use case for BTT, which will serve as a way to validate or invalidate the notion of tokenizing the BitTorrent protocol)? Torrents are known for enabling free downloading of content like movies and music. If users really wanted to pay for torrents, it’s possible that they would have already migrated to services like streaming via Netflix and Spotify. Moreover, BitTorrent users are not mandated to participate in BitTorrent Speed. (-0.5)

There is a lot of legal controversy surrounding the use of BitTorrent – the protocol itself is legal; however, as mentioned, there are many illicit uses of it, such as the sharing of copyrighted content. While it’s unlikely that the team behind BTT would get into any sort of trouble, it’s possible that users might be turned off by negative press or attention about illicit use and resulting legal disputes. (-0.5)

The team is highly experienced at building and maintaining decentralized network infrastructure (BitTorrent) and building popular blockchain-based solutions (TRON). However, competitors like Upfiring have already launched beta products, with decent feedback on places like Reddit. (-0.5)

Although the BitTorrent and TRON teams have built large-scale decentralized network infrastructure, it will be difficult to build a blockchain that can handle the massive throughput of the BitTorrent network. (-0.5)

Initial circulating supply is only 9% but will near 80% within 3.5 years, which means that the BTT token will face incredible inflationary pressure (-2)

Seed and private investors got BTT at a ~68% bonus (relative to public sale price) and don’t have a lockup (though tokens are vested over a year). (-0.5)

No details on lockups and/or vesting for team tokens. (-0.5)

Growth Potential

BitTorrent is about as legitimate as they come for proven examples of successful decentralized networks. (+2)

The tokenization of BitTorrent’s protocol could prove to be very interesting, and it’s possible that content creators and other individuals and groups that wish to distribute files could migrate to the protocol in order to circumvent the various problems associated with going through more centralized alternatives, such as app stores, music distribution platforms, and more. (+2)

If tokenization via BTT takes off due to the combination of the already large network effects of BitTorrent and the validation of the BTT tokenization model, it’s very possible that BTT might be covered in mainstream media outlets, as an example of a cryptocurrency project that has “mainstream adoption”. (+1)

The sale will be taking place on Binance’s Launchpad platform for ICOs, which provides BTT with a ready base of potential investors who can invest easily from Binance’s platform. (+1)

Although competitors like Upfiring are up and running, the team, as mentioned, has a great track record in building decentralized networks (BitTorrent and TRON). (+2)

Say what you want about Justin Sun and TRON, but no one can deny that Justin Sun and TRON are marketing wizards, who are highly capable of building investor interest in blockchain projects. During the bull run of late 2017~early 2018, TRX multiplied in price by over 100 times (as measured in USD), and the TRON community continues to be vibrant. (+2)

Disposition

BitTorrent Token will prove to be an interesting experiment for the future of decentralized technology. The team is combining an already large decentralized network (the BitTorrent protocol) with the idea of tokenization and crypto-economics. However, in terms of investing in the token sale, competitors, current blockchain technology limitations, inflationary pressure, more favorable terms for early investors, opacity regarding team tokens, and general lack of interest in ICOs amidst a bear market make BTT ICO participation a questionable proposition. Nevertheless, the sheer potential of leveraging BitTorrent’s network in a cryptocurrency project as well as the team’s experience in building decentralized networks and marketing make BTT a token to keep an eye on. BitTorrent Token receives a 5/10.

Investment Details

Type: TRC10 – Utility

Symbol: BTT

Platform: TRON

Crowdsale: January 28th, 2019 at 15:00 UTC

Minimum Investment: Unspecified

Price: 1 BTT = .00012 USD (prices in BNB and TRX set on day of token sale)

Important: Never invest (trade with) money you can't afford to comfortably lose. Always do your own research and due diligence before placing a trade. Read our Terms & Conditions here. Trade recommendations and analysis are written by our analysts which might have different opinions. Read my 6 Golden Steps to Financial Freedom here. Best regards, Jonas Borchgrevink.

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ICO Analysis: Devv

One of the major issues with blockchain technology is that the underlying platforms are unable to adequately service high amounts of usage without compromising on speed and transaction costs (“the scalability problem”).

In fact, many see this as one of the foremost obstacles for blockchain to overcome in order to achieve widespread adoption and become the basis for a new and decentralized Internet.

Various projects have sprung up and are in the works with the focus of tackling the scalability issue.

Devvio is yet another contender to step into the arena for scalable platforms and has developed a blockchain protocol called Devv that claims to address blockchain’s major issues including scalability as well as fraud, loss, theft, privacy and stability.

While seasoned ICO investors might have heard this pitch one too many times, Devv has processed over 1 million transactions per second (tps) on-chain and is currently benchmarking at over 8 million tps on-chain, the results of which can be seen here. Those would like to delve further into Devv’s technology can check out the Devv whitepaper and Devv Github.

By solving the aforementioned issues of scalability, fraud, loss, theft, privacy and stability, Devvio believes that their cryptocurrency has the potential to really grow into the preferred way for instant value exchange worldwide.

Moreover, similar to platforms, such as Ethereum and EOS, developers can build Dapps on Devv but not be limited by high fees, low transaction throughput, and sub-par security at scale.

Some use cases the Devvio team foresees for Devv include the following:

Financial Services

Using Devv to manage exchange, hedging, payments, and repatriation of funds.

Data

Using Devv to manage sensitive data in a highly secure environment.

Logistics

Track and manage goods as well as reduce traditional insurance and logistics costs.

Token

Devv’s token will be used to enable value and asset exchange similar to other cryptocurrencies and tokens.

Devvio will initially issue ERC-20 tokens to investors before ERC-20 tokens are swapped for native Devv tokens at a 1:1 ratio.

Devv tokens (total supply 500m tokens) will be allocated as follows.

30% token sale (150m tokens)

30% company reserve (150m tokens)

20% partners and acquisitions (100m tokens)

15% founders and partners (75m tokens)

4% advisors (20m tokens)

1% bounties and community (5m tokens)

According to the Devv whitepaper, token sale proceeds will be used in the following manner (assuming the hard cap of $18m is met):

15% technical development

12% Devvio operations

12% business development

18% Intellectual property development, licensing, and enforcement

20% marketing

8% supporting technologies

15% token sale fees

The amount of Devv tokens issued to investors will vary depending on how much is raised during the token offering. For instance, if the hard cap of $18m is met, token purchasers will receive 150m tokens as mentioned.

2% of Founder, Partner, and Advisor tokens will be available upon the Token Generation Event (TGE) and 98% will be vested with a cliff of 1 year at a rate of 1/8th each quarter for 2 years (after the initial 1 year lockup period).

Team

Devvio team members include the following:

CEO Tom Anderson – Anderson was the founder of Novint Technologies, a robotics company which made the first 3d touch device for consumers. Anderson is considered a pioneer in haptic technology (integrating the sense of touch into computers and virtual reality). Novint raised over $30m, licensed game development worth tens of millions of dollars, and more before its patents were sold to Facebook.

Verdict

Risks

Like many projects – not fully released. First stable release of Devv blockchain is set for Q1/Q2 2019.

For a highly ambitious blockchain platform (“solving” scalability, fraud, loss, theft, privacy and stability at the same time), no one on the team has standout experience working on similar projects.

Token allocation for token sale could be higher.

Though the token sale date hasn’t been specified, interest on social platforms thus far seems relatively low for a project of its scope (e.g. ~2.8k Telegram channel members and ~1k Twitter followers as of writing).

Growth Potential

Testnet available and not a complete whitepaper/vaporware project like many ICOs.

Team has had business success in other endeavors (e.g. Novint).

According to the Devv FAQ (“Do you have any patents”), the team has patented their ideas to build somewhat of a protective moat.

Instead of accepting that thefts occur in the blockchain/cryptocurrency space like most other projects, Devv has an optional transaction method (similar to credit card chargebacks) called DevvProtect. Optional DevvProtect wallets guard against common issues like stolen private keys and lack of asset transferal upon events, such as a token holder’s death. These are definitely interesting features that would probably be of interest to businesses, Devv’s intended audience.

Disposition

Although jaded ICO investors are probably tired of hearing about platforms that will solve scalability among other blockchain technology obstacles, Devvio’s Devv blockchain does show promise with its benchmarking of 8 million tps and testnet available for use. This in addition to the team’s business experience, focus on patents, and innovative features like optional transactions make the project one to keep an eye on as long as they can deliver technically and garner adequate community interest once the ICO date is announced. Devv receives a 7/10.

Important: Never invest (trade with) money you can't afford to comfortably lose. Always do your own research and due diligence before placing a trade. Read our Terms & Conditions here. Trade recommendations and analysis are written by our analysts which might have different opinions. Read my 6 Golden Steps to Financial Freedom here. Best regards, Jonas Borchgrevink.

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ICO Analysis: Fieldcoin

Fieldcoin is an agribusiness crowdfunding platform that enables anyone to buy, sell, rent, and manage farmland from anywhere in the world. Using IoT, smart contracts, and other agribusiness technology, token holders will form a DAC (Decentralised Autonomous Community) and vote on every aspect of their chosen agribusiness from seed to table.

“Fieldcoin’s mission is to bring the blockchain technology to land property transactions and agricultural crowdfunding projects while creating a stable transaction instrument easing the process of land and agribusiness acquisition.”

Fieldcoin will offer access to LANDS Management Services. Investors will be able to buy/sell/manage physical land of different sizes and budgets at an attractive price compared to the market value.

The company claims to:

Brings liquidity to the agricultural industry

The token is backed by land.

Decentralize the highly centralized agriculture market

Track the origin of food products.

Manage the way the food is grown (pesticides or organic)

Along with the above highlights, Fieldcoin’s “trade-back token” guarantees an 80% ratio on the value of your token to the assets in the ecosystem and the possibility of claiming your assets in physical property at a certain rate under the market price.

In the Fieldcoin ecosystem, there are 2 levels of ownership: “Off-chain,” which is to comply with national regulations and “On-chain,” which is recorded and transacted on the blockchain.

Off-chain: Fieldcoin Ltd or a third party company DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) owns the property titles recorded in the national land registry. The token holder owns a share of the company representing the specific land acquired on the platform.

On-chain: Fieldcoin Ltd creates a unique token with a unique number representing a specific property called LANDS (ERC721). The LANDS token represents the ownership of the property and can be exchanged on the Fieldcoin platform using the Blockchain.

The FCO will start April 2nd, 2019.

FCO means Field Coin Offering. It’s like any ICO, users buy (FLC) ERC20 Utility tokens which are used to acquire non-fungible tokens (ERC721), which represent a particular agricultural property. “The acquisition of NFT tokens during the ICO makes the Field Coin Offering unique and offers a strong advantage to investors that are able to test the platform and own tangible assets during the Coin Offering.”

Token

FLC is an ERC20-based utility token distributed during the FCO. The token is used as a currency to buy land, services and crowdfund agricultural projects on the platform.

LANDS is an ERC721-based token received after buying a specific land property through our platform, representing land ownership and storing the data of your property. LANDS are also available for purchase during the FCO.

According to the company, trade-back token is “Token holders will buy land on Fieldcoin’s platform and pay the full market price displayed on the website. They will be credited with a coupon to buy land for later purchases. The value of the voucher corresponds to the difference between the price drop of the token under the 80% threshold and the actual value of assets in Fieldcoin’s Ecosystem. The coupon can be applied to available properties sold by Fieldcoin Ltd on the platform.”

Distribution:

Private Sale 2%

FCO 60%

Token Bonuses 17%

Reserves 10%

Team 9%

Bounty 2%

Allocation of funds:

60% Purchase of Physical Land

15% Agribusiness Development

10% IT

7% Legal

6% Marketing

1% Reserve Fund

1% Social and Rural Development

Ecosystem asset reallocation:

85% Land Recapitalization

9% Business Operations

5% IT Development

1% Participation in Communities

Team

The Fieldcoin project is governed and supervised by Fieldcoin Ltd, registered in London. The team members are from France, Canada, USA, India, Belgium, Italy, the UK, Pakistan and China. There are over 25 team members including the advisors.

Marc Couzic is the Founder/CEO. He is a freelance commodities and crypto trader since 2013 and has been a “Contributor” to 3 blockchain projects this past year; Experty.io, Kart Block, and Magna Numeris.

Alexandre Palubniak is a Web Project Manager from France. He has spent 7 years as a freelance “Director Artistique”.

Jeremie Joncas is a COO from Canada but there is not much info on him. He owned a business for 4 years called J2 Entretien (but can’t find any info in it). He’s traded crypto for the last 1.5 years.

The rest of the team is similar to the above – very little experience in agriculture or blockchain.

There are also 10 Contributors/Advisors. They are average.

Verdict

When describing the benefits of Fieldcoin in Telegram, CEO Marc Couzic had this to say, among other things.

“Yes, it is a share profit system where 40% of net profits on production goes to the externalized land management company or farmer (choosen by Fieldcoin) exploiting the land and 60% to the owner. The holder of LANDS tokens won’t need to do a thing besides participating in decision concerning the type of crops and agricultural method used on its land. The idea is to levy the burden of execution for the investor and move towards agricultural automation processes. Additionally, the price of land grow on average 2-3% worldwide”

The idea of Fieldcoin is to have Decentralized Autonomous Communities that will decide on the agriculture products and management of their lands. They will vote on things like the amount of pesticides used, or if they want pure organic or reasonable agriculture.

The problem is DACs are complicated. Billion-dollar projects like Ethereum and EOS are still developing the tools to perfect them. Does Team Fieldcoin even have the ability to execute this massive project? It seems iffy, as they are fast approaching on the pre-sale and do not have an MVP. They only have this picture of one.

Risks

Small soft cap of just $3 million USD. According to the company: “the Proof of Concept can only be implemented once the FCO has reached $5 million USD. In the event of the cap not being reached, the Proof of Concept will be postponed.” This is sketchy. -1

The team is not very impressive at all. -2

Their business plan requires the minting of new Fieldcoin tokens to buy more land. They explain the process in detail here.-1

Only 13% of the funds raised will go to legal and marketing. -1

DACs are complicated. Many top projects are delaying launch until they figure out governance. -2

Growth Potential

First mover advantage. +2

They say they’ve already purchased land, have buying promises and about 35 offers to be displayed. +2

85% of the Ecosystem asset reallocation is reserved for new land acquisitions further expanding the Ecosystem.+2

“Fieldcoin plans to target low-risk and average potential markets first, such as the countries within the European Union, and will then move slowly to countries with more venture capital and with much higher expected returns for Fieldcoin’s Ecosystem.”+1.5

1% of the Fieldcoin tokens will be allocated to the Fieldcoin Foundation, which aims to develop community infrastructure. This project includes plans to build schools, water wells, irrigation systems, and roads.+2

“The Fieldcoin token is supported by “Trade-Back Protocol”, offering token holders the possibility to claim LANDS at a reduced price in case of market dips. Thanks to our upward trend capitalization mechanism, new physical lands will be acquired by Fieldcoin Ltd. increasing the guarantee of the Trade Back Protocol.”+2

Although we don’t score Fieldcoin well, these “respected” ICO sites have them ranked rather high. +0.5

Disposition

The tools required to build a proper DAC voting system are only now being built. Although something similar to this DAC agribusiness will someday soon be a reality, this project is too early and too ambitious, especially with such an inexperienced team. 5/10

Important: Never invest (trade with) money you can't afford to comfortably lose. Always do your own research and due diligence before placing a trade. Read our Terms & Conditions here. Trade recommendations and analysis are written by our analysts which might have different opinions. Read my 6 Golden Steps to Financial Freedom here. Best regards, Jonas Borchgrevink.

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4.2 stars on average, based on 27 rated postsJoshua Larson is also known as the "Bullshit Man" for his ability to spot it a mile away. Avid ICO researcher and contributor. Former professional poker player/backer. Spent 10 years analyzing hand history, stats, and player data.
Discovered blockchain in late 2016, and never looked back. He now uses his analysis skills to investigate ICOs full time. What a perfect match, because in today's crazy world of ICOs, information, passion, and diligence = dollar bills!

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